Doritos Cuts Ties With Transgender Ambassador After Backlash

Doritos on Tuesday confirmed that it had parted ways with a transgender influencer, but said that the decision was not the result of the transphobic backlash the partnership generated online.

For a recent social media advertising campaign dubbed “Crunch Talks,” Doritos Spain, which falls under PepsiCo Spain’s branch of products, recently featured 24-year-old transgender singer and influencer Samantha Hudson in a 50-second branded video on Instagram. The video, in turn, became the subject of transphobic online backlash, with predominantly right-wing and far-right accounts calling for a boycott of the popular snack food brand.

Many of the angry posts specifically cited last year’s calls to boycott the Bud Light beer brand and its parent company Anheuser-Busch after they sponsored a single short Instagram video with a transgender influencer. The calls came amid a notable increase in transphobic rhetoric from conservative voices and a greater push for anti-trans legislation from conservative lawmakers. While the boycott has been credited in part for the downturn in sales for Bud Light, other attempted boycotts in the wake of it had much less impact.

Speaking with Rolling Stone, a spokesperson for Doritos Spain confirmed that the video featuring Hudson was deleted and that the company has parted ways with her as a brand partner. The company stressed, however, that the decision was not in any way due to Hudson’s gender identity, but instead because of her controversial past comments of which the company had been unaware.

“We have ended the relationship and stopped all related campaign activity due to the comments,” the spokesperson told Rolling Stone. “We strongly condemn words or actions that promote violence or sexism of any kind.”

Newsweek reached out to Frito Lay, owner of the Doritos brand, via email on Tuesday evening for comment. Any responses received will be added to this article in a later update.

Prior to the Doritos video, Hudson had faced scrutiny for offensive comments, including one from when she was 15 in which she expressed a desire to perform a lewd sex act on a 12-year-old. Hudson had previously apologized for these comments when they first resurfaced amid her rise in fame, calling them “barbarities” and misguided attempts at “dark humor.”

“Some tweets that I posted in 2015 are resurfacing and honestly I don’t know what to say, I don’t remember having written such barbarities,” she wrote about the offensive posts. “At that time I dedicated myself to saying nonsense, the heavier the better, because I thought that ‘dark humor’ was funny.”